Impassible
by centreoftheselights
Summary: The final kids and trolls are gathering at their first dream bubble meeting. But the last arrival sends the situation spiralling into chaos and before they know it, their friendships are being torn apart. Part 1 of Bubblebound.


You can't decide who to hug first, so you settle for both simultaneously.

"You're okay!" John is just as happy to see them as you are, but unfortunately you are currently in possession of all the hugs. He has to wait until you let go.

"Yeah, yeah, we're all still alive." Dave is still trying to be cool, and succeeding surprisingly well for a boy in a cape who just got knocked backwards by a girl with dog ears. "You guys finally decide to join the dream bubble party?"

When John is done hugging Rose hello he turns to Dave, who offers him a fist-bump. John laughs and hugs him anyway. It's hard to tell through the glasses, but you suspect Dave isn't rolling his eyes as much as he normally would.

"I believe nearly everyone has arrived now," Rose says. "You two were nearly the last to join us."

You glance around. There certainly seem to be a lot of trolls here already. You recognise a few – nearby, a blank-eyed Feferi is hugging someone with four horns – but you're a little shy about talking to them for the first time. There are so many of them – this is already more _humans_ than you've ever seen at one time! And they are all talking to each other, leaving the four of you isolated, in your own little bubble.

"Well, we had to get to sleep first," John explains. "And then the troll girl had to come find us."

"Aradia's been pulling everyone into this bubble since we got here," Dave explained. "We're going to ride this bitch into a whole new world, magic carpet style."

"Hopefully, we'll be able to leave soon." Rose frowns slightly. "Things have been a little tense around here."

"Yeah, a few murder sprees really ruin the party atmosphere." Dave remarks.

He's probably joking, but you look around again. This time, you realise that an awful _lot_ of trolls have those strange blank ghost eyes – perhaps as many as half of them. They all seem to be more than a little on edge, and it might be your imagination, but you see nervous glances thrown in more than one direction.

"The last few arrivals should help with that," Rose says. "Although I'm not quite sure how."

You don't ask how she knows. Becoming an omnipotent dog goddess has rather recalibrated your weirdness scale.

"Here they come!"

You turn around, following John's gaze. The troll girl with the curly horns – Aradia – is descending from the sky just like she did when she led you and John here. This time, she is followed by a troll. You can't make out much about them at this distance, but you can see that they are wearing a long, purple cape – so perhaps they're on god tier too?

You're so busy watching the descent that you don't notice that it has suddenly gone very quiet indeed. All of the trolls have stopped talking at once. About half are looking at the new arrival, and the other half…

The other half are watching Feferi.

She's drawn some kind of trident out of her sylladex, and there's no way that thing is designed for anything other than strifing, but from the look of her that's exactly what she has in mind.

You realise that not quite everyone is silent. There's a low murmur, which you initially thought was the wind, but as the volume begins to rise you realise it's the four-horned guy next to Feferi, talking low and panicked. You can't hear the words, but you recognise the tone that means Bec-I-love-you-but-you're-scaring-me-please-stop and that more than anything is making your heart beat faster.

"It's fine, FF, it's okay, he can't hurt you –"

Feferi smiles sweetly, and pushes the guy to one side. He stumbles a little.

"Don't worry, Sol. It's not _me_ who's going to get hurt."

You believe her, but that isn't a good thing. Shouldn't someone be stopping this – someone who knows what's going on? You glance around, and finally recognise Karkat's gray amongst the multicoloured symbols the trolls all wear. Isn't he going to intervene? But no, he's not moving. From the look on his face, he'd offer to hold Feferi's coat if she was wearing one right now.

Whatever is going to happen, no-one is going to stop it.

Dave takes a step forward, positioning himself in front of you, and John and Rose as well. You almost object – you can take care of yourself – but Rose catches your eye and gives the slightest shake of her head: _let_ _him_.

You take a deep breath and remind yourself that Dave is the Knight, and this kind of thing is what he's best at, and all four of you are god tier anyway so you should be safe – but there's danger in the air and a threat before you and the tension is so thick that every breath feels like treacle in your lungs.

The newcomer lands, stepping smoothly from the sky before Feferi. He's tall, with zigzagging horns and a streak of purple in his hair that matches his cape. You can see now that the cape is not god tier attire – he wears normal clothes underneath it, the symbol of Aquarius on his shirt half-hidden by the folds of a long blue scarf.

"Eridan." Feferi's greeting is almost hissed.

Still airborne, Aradia retreats to a safer altitude.

"Hey Fef!" He smiles eagerly in spite of her scowl. "What's up?"

"Not much. You know, what with me being _dead_ and all."

Either Eridan can't hear the razor edge in her voice, or he doesn't care, because he takes a couple of steps towards her.

"Yeah, it's been such a pain being stuck out here. I haven't seen you guys in _forever_. I – hey!"

He narrowly dodge's the sweep of Feferi's trident.

"Fef, you almost hit me!" He sounds annoyed. You wonder why he isn't more terrified. "Be careful with that thing."

"That. Was. The. Point!" She punctuates each word with another jab, and Eridan is scrambling backwards out of the way. "You _murdered_ me! Did you think that was _okay_?"

You bite your lip, although no-one else looks surprised by the news. If possible, the situation feels even more dangerous.

"Well, okay, that _was_ a bit rash of me," he admits, like it was a minor falling out. "But you're not the only one here who's dead, are you? You can't blame anyone else on me. I mean, _I_ got murdered just as much as you did."

Several trolls shift uncomfortably, but Feferi doesn't take her gaze off of Eridan for a second.

"You might not be the only _killer_ here," she tells him, "but all of the others at least had a reason for what they did. What you did wasn't revenge or self defence. It was cold-blooded _murder_."

Another stab of the trident, and this time Eridan's step backwards catches his own cape and sends him sprawling to the ground. Feferi is standing over him, her weapon barely an inch from his throat, but Eridan just rolls his eyes.

"Fef…" he sighs.

Suddenly, the four horned troll is back, placing a hand gently on her wrist. "FF, that's enough, he isn't worth –"

"Get the shell away from her, mustard blood." Eridan snaps like thin ice underfoot, and any doubt you had about his capacity for violence evaporates.

"No." Feferi tells him. "_No_. You do not tell him what to do. You do not tell _me_ what to do. You do not act like everything is okay. What you did – who you _are_ – is not okay!"

Her voice is getting shrill, and it's as if the dream bubble itself is screaming with her. Clouds are swirling overhead, and the earth is trembling underfoot.

"I'm sick of you! Always thinking you know best! Well you don't! You never have!"

You are holding tight onto John and Rose, and in front of you Dave has drawn a broken sword from his sylladex – but there is nothing to fight.

"And I'm sick of having to keep you out of trouble when it's all. Your. Fault!"

Nothing but a screaming girl.

"Well I don't care any more! From now on, you can deal with it yourself!"

Suddenly, Rose clutches your hand so tight it hurts.

"Because I can't _stand_ you, Eridan Ampora."

You glance at her and see an expression of pure terror.

"_And_ _I_ _never_ _want_ _to_ _see_ _you_ _again_!"

Then everything disappears.

* * *

><p>You find yourself lying on the ground. It takes you a moment to remember what just happened, but when you do the panic jolts you upright so fast you make yourself dizzy.<p>

You push on and get to your feet anyway, looking around you. You are on a grassy hilltop – which is not where you were a moment ago, or at least what you remember as a moment ago.

Far more importantly, you are alone.

"Jade?"

She was beside you a second ago, her hand held tight in yours as you saw, too late, that 'best in the long run' is not necessarily the same as 'best.' You curse the half-useless brand of fortune telling you still do not understand for letting you know only a moment in advance that something dear to you was about to be ripped away.

"Jade?" The panic adds volume to your voice.

You do not understand what has happened. You know only, without a doubt, it was something dreadful.

There is a horrible silence in which you feel as though you are falling into an eternity of darkness.

Then –

"Rose?"

You sprint into the woods towards the sound, shouting as loud as you can, and hug Jade so hard you suspect it will leave a bruise. However, this is not presently something you care about at all.

As soon as you have both verified that the other is alive, in one piece, and otherwise approximately able to be described as 'well,' you release each other for long enough to take a real look at Jade and instantly notice what is wrong.

"You're _older_," you say, and it is in saying those words that you notice a change in the timbre of your voice. You glance down at yourself. "And so am I."

Jade frowns. "We can't have been out for that long. There must have been some time shenanigans. When we find Dave, he'll know what's going on."

Your pulse quickens once more as you think of your two other friends, whereabouts still unknown. Without another word, you and Jade begin to call their names.

It is only a short while before you hear footsteps, and you both eagerly turn to face –

An approaching troll girl, wearing the same garish orange as you. You remember being introduced to her, briefly – Vriska, the only troll to have reached god tier during their session. Your fellow Hero of Light. She ignored you last time you met, and you are tempted to return the favour, until a second glimpse catches your attention. She is glaring at you with blue irises and a strangely fractured pupil, which creates an eerie effect as she rolls her eyes.

"What are _you_ staring at?"

Jade's curious glance asks the same question.

"Excuse me," you say, as politely as you can manage, "but weren't you dead?"

She seems stunned by the question. It is only when you pull a mirror out of your sylladex to show her what you mean that she begins to cackle gleefully.

"Take that, Redglare! Can't keep Mindfang down for long!"

"What do you mean by that?" Another troll girl enters the clearing, red glasses on her face and white cane in hand – Terezi. In spite of her blindness, she walks unerringly towards Vriska, seeming to sniff the air.

"You're alive…" she says after a second. "And your irises have turned!"

Vriska whips the mirror up to her face again to confirm.

"Almost all the way." She closes the mirror with a snap and looks Terezi up and down. "You're taller. How long were we _asleep_?"

"I don't think it was just sleep." Kanaya Maryam saunters into the clearing, and you don't need a close inspection to tell she's older too. It's all you can do not to stare.

"Traditionally, sleep doesn't age rainbow drinkers," she explains. "Although I admit that my sources on this are a little unreliable."

"We suspect some form of time travel," you tell her, "but unfortunately our Heroes of Time seem to have deserted us."

"Where _is_ the coolkid?" Terezi asks, and you belatedly realise she's talking about your brother.

"Or John for that matter?" Vriska adds, with a rather unnecessary toss of her hair.

"I was next to John when… whatever just happened, happened," Jade says. "Perhaps he's back over there."

She points directly opposite your hill, further into the woods. You nod as though this makes sense – although you know full well normal logic ceased to apply to problems like this at some point in the early hours of this morning – and follow Jade's lead, with a trio of trolls trailing after you.

It is approximately ten minutes later – just as it begins to dawn on you that walking randomly through the woods shouting out names may not be the most efficient search technique – that you come to a sudden halt.

"What on Alternia is _that_?"

Kanaya's sentiment perfectly encapsulates your own reaction, give or take a planetary colloquialism.

Before you, a shimmering blue wall cuts through the forest, rising high into the sky above you, and continuing in every direction as far as the eye can see.

You wonder why you even bother to be surprised at this point.

"I'm sorry guys!" You turn to see Feferi land hard on the ground. Aradia floats down after her. "I don't know what I did, but I didn't mean to!"

"It is _fascinating_." Aradia is still smiling, as she has been every time you've seen her.

"Time's gone screwy," Vriska says sharply. "Isn't that _your_ problem?"

"We appear to have aged by a little over a sweep – that is, about three Earth-years." The smile broadens. "But the far more interesting notion is that our aging process appears to have completely stopped."

"How can time have stopped if we're still moving around?" you ask.

"It isn't time that's passing any more." Aradia makes it sound like this should be obvious. "It's _space_."

Jade gasps, and you realise that she has only _just_ remembered the god tier space powers. While you try not to roll your eyes, she turns her gaze to the blue wall, and then turns back to you frowning.

"We're headed to the new universe, fast," she explains. "But at this speed, time and space have got kind of mixed up. I think Aradia's right – we've already aged as much as we would have the whole journey, but we haven't experienced that time yet."

Great. Not only are your Seer powers completely useless, but you're caught in a spacetime tangle that a Hero of Light has no hope of understanding. You wish you had paid more attention in Physics, although you doubt it would help you much here.

Since her words didn't make a great deal of sense to you, you focus instead on Jade's expression which, as she examines the blueness, is slowly shifting from "I have a feeling we're not in Kansas any more" to "please tell me that's just ketchup."

"There's another bubble nearby, on a parallel trajectory…" She starts back from the barrier, and when you reach out to steady her it takes a moment for her eyes to come into focus.

"Something's wrong," she gasps. "I can't even _look_ at it. It's…"

Feferi puts her head in her hands. "I don't know what happened. I'm sorry! I was just so glubbing _mad_."

"It wasn't exactly your fault!" Aradia tells her. "The horrorterrors were feeling protective of you. I think they glubbed out these special bubbles just to keep us all safe on the journey!"

Kanaya frowns. "What purpose does the second bubble serve?"

You look around and you already know the answer. You want to shout it, scream it, but the knowledge of it holds your heart in a vice. You freeze.

"Eridan's probably stuck in there where he can't bug the rest of us," Vriska says.

"But where's everyone else?" Jade asks.

"Don't worry!" Aradia tells you all. For a moment you think you must have guessed wrong – but there is something discomforting about that smile…

"They're all safe!" she promises. "It's just that the horrorterrors aren't very good at telling who's who. So they just go by simple things… like gender!"

She says it so carelessly it takes everyone a second to understand, but you see each of them realise – the slow dawning of horror, fear and pain which mangles their expressions.

You all are faced with something too vast to comprehend: three years. _Three_ _years_ without John, or Dave, or any other boy.

The mere thought of it seems to stretch into infinity.

No one moves. No one speaks. No one cries.

And then, into that merciless silence, a question is thrown:

"What happened to Nepeta?"

* * *

><p>Your name is Nepeta, and you don't know what just happened. You were looking forward to everyone finally being together again, but then Eridan arrived and everything started to go wrong.<p>

The last thing you remember, something bad was happening.

Something bad _has_ happened.

You are alone.

You were lucky enough to get a second chance with Equius, and you promised yourself you would never let go of him again.

In front of you, something blue and glittering separates you from the direction your moirail should be.

Hesitation doesn't cross your mind. You run towards the blueness, and leap.

You don't know what to expect when you hit the blueness, and there is a part of you which realises too late that this wall might be solid, but it is not. It's liquid, and as sticky as half-dried blood. As it covers your face you feel like you're drowning in it, a sensation made worse by the way that every part of your exposed skin buzzes and stings like a swarm of bees.

You claw blindly, trying to force your way through, but your momentum is fading fast and dark stars are flashing in your vision.

You aren't going to make it.

A hand grasps your wrist.

At first you think you've imagined it, but then a sharp tug pulls you forwards and suddenly your hand is free. You have made it.

You pull your way forwards, and the unseen hand pulls too, and finally your face is free and you can breathe again and there is nothing in this world but clinging on tight to the troll you know will always rescue you.

"Equius!"

Your limbs are wrapped around his torso, and that must hurt because your claws are still drawn, but he doesn't seem to care, he just crushes you into a hug so _strong_ it's hard to breathe and you whisper apologies to each other for something that wasn't either of your faults.

Deep in your chest, a pain is soothed as you reassure yourself that Equius is here and everything is alright.

But everything is not alright.

Something tugs at your hips and your shoulders, pulling you backwards, away from Equius. You cling on tighter, tucking your chin against his neck, and finally notice the red tendrils grasping at his back, trailing back towards an enormous bubble of redness.

Whatever this is, it is trying to pull you apart. But not even death can separate the two of you.

Right?

"I'm sorry, Nepeta." You don't dare release your grip enough to look at his face, but you do not need to see him to know when Equius is trying not to show how scared he is. "I don't think we can stay here much longer."

You want to protest, but the pull on your back is getting stronger, and you know he's right.

"I don't want to be apart from you." It feels ridiculous that you even have to say the words out loud.

"I'm so, so sorry."

With a shudder, he grip weakens momentarily and you are wrenched apart – no! – but you move only a few inches before he grasps you by the shoulders and you regain your hold on each other. Your arms feel like they are being pulled out of their sockets, but you do not care. There is too much you need to say.

"It isn't your fault," you tell him. "Don't you _dare_ blame yourself, mister!"

"Of course not," he says automatically, although you know he wants to do just that.

"And – If we're going to be apart –" The words catch in your throat. "You have to take care of yourself, you hear me?"

He nods, but there is more you have to say.

"That means if you need someone… someone pale…" The thought of it is so _wrong_ you can't stand it, but the thought of Equius having no-one is even worse. "If you need to, you _find_ someone, okay?"

"But –"

"Promise me!"

He smiles weakly. "I purr-omise. And Nepeta… stay safe."

You open your mouth to agree, but before you can speak he slips out of your grasp and you are hurtling backwards towards the blue wall, leaving your heart behind here in the void.

You land with a jolt of pain on the forest floor.

Blue blood drips off of your claws, and green bruises are beginning to tint your arms.

You hear voices in the distance.

You abscond.


End file.
